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The Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo

The Monastery of Saint Simon, also known as the Cave Church,
is located in the Mokattam mountain in southeastern Cairo, Egypt, in an
area that is known as ‘garbage city’ because of the large population of
garbage collectors or Zabbaleen that live there. The Zabbaleen are
descendants of farmers who started migrating from Upper Egypt to Cairo
in the 1940s. Fleeing poor harvests and poverty they came to the city
looking for work and set-up makeshift settlements around the city.
Initially, they stuck to their tradition of raising pigs, goats,
chickens and other animals, but eventually found collecting and sorting
of waste produced by the city residents more profitable. The Zabbaleen
would sort through household garbage, salvaging and selling things of
value, while the organic waste provided an excellent source of food for
their animals. In fact, this arrangement worked so well, that successive
waves of migrants came from Upper Egypt to live and work in the newly
founded garbage villages of Cairo.
Photo credit: Gianluigi Guercia For
years, the makeshift settlements of the Zabbaleen were moved around the
city trying to avoid the municipal authorities. Finally, a large group
of Zabbaleen settled under the cliffs of the Mokattam or Moquattam
quarries at the eastern edge of the city, which has now grown from a
population of 8,000 in the early 1980s, into the largest garbage
collector community in Cairo, with approximately 30,000 Zabbaleen
inhabitants.
Egypt is a Muslim-majority country, but the
Zabbaleen are Coptic Christians, at least, 90 percent of them are.
Christian communities are rare to find in Egypt, so the Zabbaleen prefer
to stay in Mokattam within their own religious community even though
many of them could afford houses elsewhere.
The local Coptic
Church in Mokattam Village was established in 1975. After the
establishment of the church, the Zabbaleen felt more secure in their
location and only then began to use more permanent building materials,
such as stone and bricks, for their homes. Given their previous
experience of eviction from Giza in 1970, the Zabbaleen had lived in
temporary tin huts up till that point. In 1976, a large fire broke out
in Manshiyat Nasir, which led to the beginning of the construction of
the first church below the Mokattam mountain on a site of 1,000 square
meters. Several more churches have been built into the caves found in
Mokattam, of which the Monastery of St. Simon the Tanner is the largest
with a seating capacity of 20,000. In fact, the Cave Church of St. Simon
in Mokattam is the largest church in the Middle East.Photo creditPhoto creditPhoto creditPhoto creditPhoto creditPhoto creditPhoto creditPhoto credit
The garbage city. Photo creditPhoto creditPhoto credit
Sources: Wikipedia, A.P.E. Cairo
Via Amusing Planet